


Wave function collapse

by malfaisant



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Infinity War spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 10:30:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14714352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfaisant/pseuds/malfaisant
Summary: Hey, Captain America, remember me?Tony can start, with all the brass and bravado he can muster.Iron Man, y’know, we used to save the world together?





	Wave function collapse

It is late, and he is alone in the compound, a draft of the latest amendments to the Sokovia Accords laid out on the table before him in a disorganized sprawl. He knows he’s too tired to get anything done that night, but it’s the sort of weariness that will have him tossing and turning until morning anyway, and at least here at his desk he doesn't have to think about how his bed is too large for one person.

Instead here, at his desk, he can think all about how the compound is too large for one person. Some futurist he’s turned out to be.

So maybe it isn’t his best idea, moving the Avengers out here.

The place is newly renovated, outfitted with all the best and latest money can buy. Meant to house a lot more people than it currently did. Without the bustle and noise of New York City beneath him, the emptiness of the place is inescapable. Harsh and clinical are hardly the best adjectives to describe a home, if it can be called that.

It’s why he had asked the kid to move in, isn’t it? Would have alleviated some of the quiet. A kid too smart for his own good, with a mouth that does its best to keep up with a brain that worked too fast. Tony knows he has problems with projection, but that is way too on the nose for anyone to really blame him, right? But the kid is smarter than Tony thought. Smarter than Tony, anyway.

Pepper, meanwhile, is in Los Angeles for a Maria Stark Foundation fundraising gala. “We’re just trying to keep the lights on around here,” she had told him with a smile as she boarded the jet yesterday morning, and he saw her off with a kiss on the cheek. Technically there are some quinjets in the garage he can misappropriate and easily be there in time for closing ceremonies, but the thought of facing all those flashing camera lights right now makes him feel mildly ill.

Rhodey’s out on a UN-sanctioned mission in Madripoor. Maybe Tony can tinker with the latest model for his leg bracers. He’s had some promising breakthroughs with nanotech lately.

Vision is—away. Tony is always careful not to ask too many questions, and Viz never volunteers more information than is strictly necessary. Vision always keeps up his end of their unspoken agreement, always comes back when he says he will.

Which leaves…Tony, staring down the bottle of Jack Daniels he keeps in his bottom drawer.

Instead of pouring out a glass, Tony pulls out the phone that lay beside it out of the drawer.

The phone in his hand is _ancient_ , old enough to order its own drink. It’s the first time he’s taken it out since the courier delivered it all those months ago. Where did Rogers even manage to find a flip phone, in this day and age? If he had only asked, Tony could have given him a better model, nigh untraceable to anyone or anything, even himself. But maybe it doesn't matter, maybe Steve already knew that. Knew that if Tony really wanted to, he can track down Rogers and his rogue Avengers in a heartbeat. Sure, it might take a couple of days, since Steve is resourceful and Natasha is with him besides, but he can.

Then again, Tony is tired of thinking about what Steve Rogers might and might not have known.

He rubs the flat of his palm on his chest, over the space where the arc reactor used to be. The skin there is pale and unnaturally smooth, regenerated tissue the same texture of a healed burn. He gives a small grimace as another small pang of numbness shoots through his chest, and he wonders how it is that his heart feels heavier than it ever did with the arc reactor in place, now that it’s just a hollow of scar tissue.

Tony puts the phone down on the tabletop and closes the whiskey drawer. There are armor specs waiting for him in the lab that will provide just as good a distraction as either of them for a quiet night like this one.

*

Two wizards, an irradiated gamma scientist, and a billionaire walk into a Greenwich townhouse. There is a joke here Tony can make, but having all his worst nightmares of the past half-decade laid out and confirmed for him is a bit distracting.

He closes his eyes, takes a small breath. A panic attack now will just make things worse. Worser.

Infinity stones. Death and destruction on a universal scale. “Tony, listen to me,” Bruce says, a pleading note in his voice. “Thor’s gone. Thanos is coming, it doesn’t matter who you’re talking to or not.”

It’s not as if he didn’t know this was coming. That is, after all, the long and short of all that’s plagued him for the last few years. He had known it was coming, and what’s haunted the better part of his dreams since he fell through a wormhole is that he won’t be able to do anything to stop it when it comes.

If anyone can, maybe… maybe Steve—

Tony pulls the phone out of his pocket, flips open the screen. A single contact is listed on the screen, next to a number he knows by heart. His thumb swipes the dust off the screen and hovers over the call button. Figures that carrying around the shoddy hunk of plastic has paid off in the worst possible way.

Maybe he can’t find the joke but all signs point to him being the punchline.

(It’s not as if he didn’t know this was coming.)

There are any number of things he can say. He’s scripted them out in his head before, many times, wasted an embarrassing amount of brain-space thinking about it, to be perfectly honest. Maybe he should open with that, ask for some compensation, because the real estate prices in Tony Stark’s brain are sky-fucking-high, even if the neighbors are terrible.

 _Hey, Captain America, remember me?_ Tony can start, with all the brass and bravado he can muster. _Iron Man, y’know, we used to save the world together, fight side by side like brothers? I know we had a falling out, but you up for burying the hatchet over some brunch, maybe some preemptive Avenging this afternoon? I know this wonderful place in the East Village—what’s that? All that Accords business? Hiding the murder of my parents? Oh, that’s all water under the bridge, old man, the fate of the universe is at stake—_

_Fuck you, Cap, fuck you for making me do this, for making me have to be the one to reach out, I’m gonna repulsor you to the face first chance I get—_

_Rogers, you bastard, I forgive you already so would you please, just—_

_Steve, I’m sorry, I’m not as good at this as you think I am and we need you, I need you, I, I, I—_

The panicked screaming outside and the onset of an alien invasion is almost a welcome interruption. Tony flips the phone shut and shoves it back into his pocket.

*

Thanos has been in Tony’s head for six years. Only difference is now he has a name to the nightmares.

The spaceship careens through the void on auto-pilot. As stars fly past them on the observation deck, Tony tries and fails miserably not to think of the last time he was out here. On the long list of crimes he can lay at Thanos’ feet, totally ruining space as a concept for him would be right up there, maybe right under terrorism and genocide.

The stars. What once used to be the ultimate, inevitable destiny of humanity as a species, the last uncharted wonder, the great unknown—now Tony sees nothing but death. The threat of war and extinction hiding just at the very edges of the yawning dark.

_We take the fight to him._

His mind pores over plans, calculations, contingencies for contingencies. There are too many unknown variables and no way of figuring out if this is the right choice, if there’s even a way of beating Thanos on his home turf. Tony has a wizard, a kid, and a magic carpet for allies. There’s rooting for the underdog, and then there’s this.

There is nothing to do but wait.

But it’s a little too late to regret all that, now. Too late to make a call that might have made all the difference. Several light-years too late, anyway.

Last he remembers is putting the phone away in the Sanctum Santorum, but his pockets are empty now. He must have dropped it somewhere on the way to space and his near-inevitable doom. Hopefully someone picked it up and made the call he couldn’t.

Was it pride that stalled him? Cowardice? Resentment? Considering he isn't exactly want for all of those, Tony can’t rule out any of the above—

“You okay, Mr. Stark?”

Tony jerks in his seat by the ship’s steering mechanism and blinks stupidly at Peter.

“Sorry, I doesn't mean to startle you!” Peter says, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “The stealth tech on this suit is just like, ridiculously good, and you seemed like, well—”

He flounders for a bit, and Tony has to grit his teeth. God, but he is so absurdly young. _This is a one-way ticket_ , but for his sake, it can’t be.

“I’m good, kid,” Tony says easily, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Just trying to think up a plan of attack, you know?”

“Anything good?” Peter asks as he sits down beside Tony.

“Yeah, tons. How’s the new suit doing you, by the by? I’m gonna need you on your A-game when we land so keep those movie refs handy.”

Tony holds out his hand, projecting a holographic display of the Iron Spider over the repulsor. “Let’s go over some of the updates I made to the suit…”

Contingencies, contingencies; he’s thought of this, he’s seen this.

If Tony can do nothing else, he’s gonna make damn sure the kid stays alive long enough to get home.

*

_“Tony, it was the only way—”_

Not with a bang. The world doesn't end the way Tony expected it to. Instead, it is sudden, quiet, still—the air going cold with a calm sense of loss. He draws his knees close, holding a hand to his chest as he rocks back and forth slightly.

He can still feel the weight of Peter Parker in his arms.

A universe, recalibrated.

Death doled out fairly, indiscriminately, uncaring. Impartial, past the point of cruelty.

 _Bullshit._ How can anyone say that when it could’ve taken him, could’ve taken him instead of the kid—

It could’ve taken him instead of those oddballs from space, they at least had a chance of running away from all this—

It could’ve taken him instead of Strange, so that the bastard can try and see through this shitty plan of his. Odds of winning being millions to the one, but can there ever be anything like victory, after all this death?

_After I’m done, half of humanity will still be alive._

Tears run down his face freely. He can taste blood and bile in his mouth. His heart beats in his chest, fluttering rabbit-fast, all these unwelcome reminders as if to make certain he can’t forget that _he_ is still alive, no matter how much he wishes otherwise.

“Come.” The blue-skinned alien braces a hand under his arm and helps Tony to his feet. “My name is Nebula. I can take you back to your planet, if you want.”

Tony stares at her, barely comprehending.

“Where are you from?” she asks.

“Where…?”

“Your planet,” she says, not unkindly. “Where is your home?”

Home, or what’s left of it. Now that the subject has come up, the question stalking at the back of his mind has free rein to charge forward—who died? Who else has he lost? Who is left? Is Pepper / Rhodey / Steve—

What if he’s the only one left?

If Tony never returns, he will never have to find out the answer. The prospect catches him by violent surprise, so tempting it makes his heart ache—to take refuge in ignorance and uncertainty. To never know.

_If he doesn’t open the box, the wave function can’t collapse. They can’t be dead if he doesn’t open the box._

He closes his eyes.

_You’re not the only one cursed with knowledge._

But if the gauntlet can do this, then the gauntlet can undo all this.

_I shouldn't be alive… unless it was for a reason._

“Earth,” Tony says. “My home is Earth.“

*

Nebula drops him off outside the compound in the dead of night, waving off his invitation to join him. She’s going to hunt her bastard father down, she says, and Tony intends to do the same, but since he doesn't have much more of a plan beyond that, she doesn't see the point of staying. She promises to forward him any leads that look promising, being that they have a common goal.

Tony’s clearance codes got them through the atmosphere and past Stark monitoring satellites unharassed. The compound, expectedly, is deserted when he arrives.

He makes his way to his bedroom and pulls up a display on the glass wall with a wave of his hand. A stab of pain radiates from the wound on his torso, and he falls forward onto the edge of the bed in a graceless heap.

A quick scan of communication transmissions worldwide paints a picture of a world in complete cascade failure—governments in anarchy, whole cities emptied of people, the catastrophic breakdown of the fabric of society. Grief and loss make people do funny things.

He sits upright and buries his head in his hands, pulling at his hair in frustration.

_If the gauntlet can do this, then the gauntlet can undo all this._

Easier said than done. Now that he’s back on Earth, the enormity of the task before him seems incomprehensibly massive, somehow even more daunting than before—

The sound of a sharp intake of breath makes his heart stutter.

“Tony?”

_From uncertainty to certainty, the wave function collapses—_

It could be a hallucination, a mere trick of a weary mind, and a cruel one at that. But Tony has to know. Slowly, slowly, he rises to his feet and turns around. Standing at the doorway, bruised and battered but undeniably alive, is Steve.

Before Tony realises what’s happening, Steve is already running towards him, is already embracing him in his arms.

“Tony,” Steve says again, hugging him close, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

At those words, all at once, the exhaustion of the past few days suddenly make themselves felt, as if to have finally caught up with him. Tony’s legs wobble as he falls forward into Steve’s crushing embrace, wrapping his arms around Steve and scrabbling at the straps of his uniform to keep upright. He buries his face against Steve’s shoulder, all the words he wants to say bubbling up and getting stuck in his throat.

Half the universe gone, yet Steve is still here. If Steve is still here, then—then Tony still has hope.

Steve pulls back to look Tony over, a hand cupping his cheek. His thumb traces over the laceration under Tony’s eye, still only half-healed.

“Steve,” Tony manages to croak out, his voice scratchy and hoarse. “Nice beard.”

Steve laughs, shaking his head. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”

Tony pulls away and sits back down on the bed. “C’mon, Cap, I know I look like shit. Appreciate the thought, though.”

They stay like that for a moment, both awkward and unsure of what to say now that the initial surprise at the other’s unexpected (yet desperately hoped for) survival has passed. Tony stares a while longer, trying to catalog all the changes he can find—lines on his face that weren’t there before, longer hair a darker shade of blond, but his eyes still the same bright blue as he remembered—

“Cap—” Tony starts, at the same time that Steve says, “Tony—”

They both stare at each other for a moment more, before Steve makes the universal gesture of ‘ _you first_ ’ with a wave of his hand.

Tony has so many questions, but the one he dreads to ask the most is also the most important. “The Avengers… how many of us are left?”

The grim expression on Steve’s face is telling, even before he puts a name to their losses. “Not many. We tried to hold off Thanos in Wakanda. Vision asked Wanda to destroy him, to destroy the stone, but Thanos came and just… undid all of it, with the gauntlet.”

“With the time stone,” Tony says, more to himself than anyone else. _The time stone Strange gave up so that Thanos would spare him._

Steve nods. “Thor, Bruce, and Natasha all survived. Rhodey too. They’re still in Wakanda now. I came here to scout ahead, see if we can still use the compound as a base.” He pauses then, suddenly unable to meet Tony’s eyes. “We don’t know where Pepper is,” he says.

Tony blinks and turns away to face the wall before him wordlessly. After a beat, he manages to clear his throat and ask, “What were you gonna say, before?”

“I…” Steve trails off, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. “I was going to apologize for—for everything that transpired before all this. I’m sorry that my actions drove us apart the way it did,” he says.

Silence follows Steve’s declaration. Tony falters, stuck between a desperate want to believe in those words and a terrible fear of believing in something too good to be true.  

A soft, quiet determination takes over Steve’s face, an expression Tony hadn’t realized he missed so much until that very moment. To his further surprise, Steve goes down on his knee and grabs Tony’s shoulders, making it impossible for him to turn away from his gaze.

“I meant what I said, Tony,” Steve says, with such painful sincerity as to make Tony’s breath catch.

Tony looks up at Steve, before wiping ineffectually at the corner of his eyes. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret, Rogers. The world hasn’t ended yet.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at that. “Hasn’t it?”

“No, would you believe it? A wizard told me I can still save everyone,” says Tony with a huff of disbelieving laughter. If the plan didn’t sound absurd before—

“Of course, he didn’t tell me how,” he continues, sounding vaguely delirious, “or why it has to be me—”

Steve grabs Tony’s hand and holds it in his own. “I didn’t apologize just because I thought I have nothing left to lose. I still have you, and the team. And if you’re saying there’s a way Tony Stark can still save everyone,” he says, “I believe it.”

_The phone in his hand is heavy. His thumb hovers over the call button. What is he still waiting for?_

“There’s a way to fix all this,” Tony says, after a moment. “There is, but I can’t do it alone.”

“I gave you my word, that I’d be there when you needed me,” Steve says, clutching Tony’s hand to his chest. “Whatever we do, we’ll do it together.”

“And if we fail?” Tony asks, despite already knowing the answer. Maybe he just wants to hear the words anyway.

Steve smiles. “We do that together too.”

“I’m sorry too, Steve, I—” Tony’s voice breaks halfway through as apology turns into confession, a lump rising in his throat, “I’m not half as good at—at _anything_ as I am when I’m doing it next to you.”

“Neither am I,” Steve says. He leans forward, one hand on the back of Tony’s neck as he presses their foreheads together. “You’re not alone, Tony. Not anymore.”

“14,000,605 to 1,” Tony says, closing his eyes, his voice a near whisper. “Those are our odds, Cap. You still sure about this?”

“I have Iron Man on my team,” Steve answers. “I’ll take my chances.”

**Author's Note:**

> as always, all my love & thanks to Kiran for making this fic readable!


End file.
